(This is an archive of http://bugzilla.ximian.com/good-bugs.html, as of
March 2, 2008.)

Helpful Bug Guidelines

(Maintained by Luis Villa)

Bugzilla is a database of bugs and feature requests developed by the
Mozilla project. It helps
developers keep track of what's broken and who's fixing it. Users
can help our effort by making their bug reports clear and specific.
The better your bug report, the easier it is to identify the cause,
and fix the bug.

Reproducible: If the developers can't see it or conclusively
prove that it exists, they will probably stamp it "WORKSFORME" or
"INVALID", and move on to the next bug. Provide step-by-step
instructions for reproducing the bug, and we'll be able to find and
destroy it.

Specific: Try and figure out exactly what causes the
crash. If you find an email that crashes Evolution, good. If you
find what parts of the message make things go wrong, even better.

Unique: Before you report a bug, try to make sure it hasn't been reported before. If you have new information about an existing bug, please post a comment on the first bug.

Current. Before filing a bug, make sure you've run Red Carpet and installed the latest version of the program. That will minimize the chance of reporting a bug that has already been fixed.

Other tips:

Do include a stack trace and any error messages or console
output the application gave. You can get stack traces easily with
Bug Buddy, the GNOME Bug Report tool. Please don't attach
core files or screenshots, though, unless the screenshot demonstrates a specific user interface problem that is hard to explain in words.

Do Write a summary that is specific enough to distinguish the
bug from most others. Good: “Network Setup Tool hangs when verifying
DHCP server.” Bad: “Setup Tools Crash.”

Do give step by step instructions on how to reproduce the problem.

If you find a mail message that crashes Evolution, please
don't forward it to evolve@ximian.com. Do include it
in a bugzilla report or post it on a web page.

Do tell us the exact name and version of all relevant
software, including your distribution and operating system. For example:"Red Carpet 0.9.1 won't work with the RPM v. 4.0.2 database from my Red Hat 7.1 Beta system.” Don't say “I'm using Linux, and Ximian Setup Tools crashes.”